Friday, December 18, 2009

Can God Truly See Us?

Note: One of the reasons I have not blogged very much in the past 15 weeks, is I have been taking the English class our church's Bible Institute offers. Our final class was last night and I hope to be able to post more often. The following is what I wrote for my final paper for that class. I pray it challenges you as it has me - and has changed my life.

Beginning the day a child is born into a Christian home, he is taught that the Lord God sees all. One of the first scriptures committed to memory, through the frequent repeating from parents and Sunday School teachers, is Proverbs 15:3: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” The familiarity of this verse (and others like it) often calluses the Christian’s heart toward the doctrine of God’s omnipresence and omniscience. It is for this very reason we sin. If we could actually see God as He can see us, the challenge to be perfect as He is perfect would become almost attainable.

“For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from my eyes.” If Christians would truly contemplate these words from our God found in Jeremiah 16:17, we would feel great shame and remorse for many of our actions committed in just the last several days. AllEverything we do is in His direct line of vision as He sits upon His throne in a perfect, sinless place. The sadness it causes Him must be immense. Only by meditating on what a perfect God feels when He sees His beloved children openly sinning can we even begin to get a taste of His longsuffering and mercy. of our ways are seen by God.

Do we really and truly believe what the Bible tells us? Judging by our actions, by my own actions, the answer would most definitely have to be “no.” The Bible says, “Thou shalt not covet,” yet we drive down the street and wish our neighbor’s beautiful home was ours. We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, yet we are too focused on our own life to write a note or make a phone call to our neighbor who is hurting. God wants us to love Him with our whole heart, mind, and strength, yet we stay up late at night filling our minds with all sorts of ungodliness as we sit in front of computers and televisions, making it impossible for us to get up early enough to commune with the God Who gave everything for us. I fear we do not believe God and His Word. We do not believe in His omnipresence. We do not believe He can see us, for if we did, we would be on our faces begging the Almighty for forgiveness.

As a mother, when I want to find out what is truly going on between my children, I will quietly watch them without their knowing. They do know that I am somewhere in the house, but they do not believe that I can see them and hear them. Without me in their sight, they believe they can get away with breaking the rules. Once a child gives in to the temptation one of two things will happen. Either a sibling will correct him with words so that his behavior will change or he will have enjoyed the experience of “getting away” with something and will attempt it again. When I speak to him from my secret place or reappear suddenly, a look of surprise and extreme guilt comes over his face.

How much more so will we look when Christ suddenly appears to take us Home? When we stand before Him and He says, “What about that time you gossiped about My child?” it will suddenly be a reality to us that He has seen every thing we have done and heard every word we have spoken each moment we have lived on this earth. The reality of His omnipresence will be overwhelming, as will our feeling of shame and remorse. If we could only keep this moment our future holds in the forefront of our minds throughout our days, how would our lives be changed?

It is sobering to realize that God knows me. He knows my heart better than I know it. Jeremiah 12:3 states, “But thou, O Lord, Knowest me: thou has seen me, and tried mine heart toward thee.” As I read this verse, I cannot help but ask what the Lord sees in my heart. Does He see hatred instead of love, or pride rather than selflessness, or contempt toward my children instead of tender compassion? Does He see evil and wickedness in my heart instead of righteousness and good? Habakkuk 1:13 tells us that God is “…of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” God’s eyes are pure and He is holy. He cannot look on sin, yet He does. He sees it everywhere when He watches what is occurring here on earth and He sees it in the hearts of men. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good.” Meditate on the fact that the pure eyes of the Lord are beholding evil. God’s eyes are pure and through no will of His, but through our own selfish desires, He is forced to hold evil in His sight. The thought of my sin attempting to defile the eyes of my precious Lord is incomprehensible, but it is the terrible reality of our fallen nature.

As a people who are sinful by nature, we cannot be, nor will we be, perfect as long as we live in this fallen world. However, He has made for us a way to escape temptation and that is through His word. Psalm 1:2-3 describes the righteous man as delighting “in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither.” Hiding God’s Word in our hearts and thinking on it throughout the day will keep His face before us. His presence will become real to us and evil will not so easily penetrate our thoughts and our actions. Just as a large, green tree is pleasant to look upon and gives refreshment from the harsh elements of the land surrounding it, so is the heart of the Christian who meditates on Scripture. Such a heart is pleasant for God to behold and its righteousness enables Him to refresh His pure eyes from the wickedness that He is often forced to behold.

As His name is Emmanuel, so ought we to live. God is indeed with us. Only by truly seeking His face daily in the Holy Bible and meditating on His words will we make this reality our belief. Once we believe it, our lives will forever change.

6 comments:

What a comfort to know that, although He sees all of our sin and selfishness, He loves us still. Nothing that we have ever done or can ever do will remove even the tiniest mite of that love from His overflowing heart. And He is always calling us gently to repentance, back to that place of safety which is close to Him. Praise His name!♥

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